


Have you reckoned a thousand acres much?

by duckfresco



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Getting Together, Jord is a good Captain and a good man, M/M, Nikandros' loyalty boner for Damen, Smut, Unreliable Narrator, canon-typical cisnormativity/disrespect for sex workers/slight ableist language, discussions about slavery, long-haired Nik, me holding my love for these characters in one hand and their problematic views in the other: help, set KR through Adventures of Charls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 12:10:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14790293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duckfresco/pseuds/duckfresco
Summary: Nikandros, and Jord, and the ebb and spread of cultures. (Where there is love, there must first be respect; where there is respect, it is easy for love to follow).





	Have you reckoned a thousand acres much?

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Walt Whitman’s “[Song of Myself, I, II, VI, and LII](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/song-myself-i-ii-vi-lii).” In some ways I think the poem could fit Nikandros and Jord well, if they let it. Maybe I’m a romantic.

Jord was not a handsome man.

Nikandros had noticed this as the third thing after meeting him, after sizing up the other man’s military bearing and the evidenced lack of noble blood, surprising for the Captain of a prince’s army. Even if Jord had been a slave, trained for pleasure, Nikandros would not have bedded him. Nikandros did not have Damen’s specific tastes, but he preferred his partners to be, at the least, attractive. It was a comfort that not all of Laurent’s men were as sharply ethereal as he himself was. Nikandros had had visions of a parade of pale-headed, sapphire-eyed creatures designed to turn Damen’s head and empty it out even more fully than it was around their Prince. There was no way that Jord could have influenced Damen’s high opinion with anything other than his own merit, and so Nikandros approached him with more respect than a man of Jord’s birth, Captain or no, strictly merited.   
  
(A man named Enguerran was the Veretian’s Captain, in technicality. Nikandros had taken one look at the situation and, unfooled, come to Jord.)

He was rewarded with an honest assessment of their combined men, evaluated with a keener eye and better understanding than Nikandros had dared to hope. Here was a man who could give orders, and follow them, without needing a week’s pampering beforehand. It was needed, and it was a welcome respite after councils that made Nikandros’ teeth ache from grinding. Relaxing had been (and still was) out of the question, but Nikandros had found his worries less frantic and more grimly practical than they had been the last span of mornings.

Since that first meeting Nikandros had found himself seeking Jord out more often than not for dealing with the particular concerns of a Veretian army that still—still!—bucked under the straightforwardness of Akielon command. Jord was, naturally, useless in dealing with the court, but he had a talent for seeing to the heart of a problem among the ranks that Nikandros admitted likely had to do with having been promoted up through them.

The first time they fought on the sawdust, the fight was close, and protracted, but Nikandros was the one on his back at the end of it. Nikandros looked up the thin pale line of the sword angled over him and knew he was seeing the same thing that Jord saw: an Akielon at the mercy of a Veretian blade.

Delpha had been taken from him, but Nikandros had been Kyros there for six years. He had known her, and the border was not kind to either side. There was an immediacy, at the edges of things, where they came together. A cruelty. An edge was no place for mercy.

With enough force, even a dulled practice sword held an edge that would suffice. Nikandros let the awareness of it seep through him, saw it matched in the reflection in Jord’s eyes. If Jord killed, or even seriously wounded, Nikandros here, then his life would be forfeit, but even so Damen would seek retaliation and the alliance would be dissolved. Nikandros thought of Charcy. He thought of blond hair, and of sinuous artifice, infecting.

“You’re good,” Nikandros said.   
  
“Yes,” said Jord.

Nikandros was not afraid for himself. He had left that behind at fifteen, the first time he had sent men to die for him and known it. But he was afraid of what Damen might give in to, if Nikandros was not there to stop him.

“Another?” he asked. Each mote of sawdust pressed discretely into his skin. The blood of his pulse beat twice, three times.

“Yes,” said Jord, and lifted the sword, and offered a hand to help Nikandros up.

 

* * *

 

 “Why _don’t_ you wear armor?”

“I wear armor,” said Nikandros, sweeping a hand over his leather skirt, his vambraces, greaves, breastplate, the helmet he had under his arm. 

“You know what I meant.” Jord sounded exasperated. Which had been Nikandros’ intention. People always seemed shocked, when he did such things, like they’d forgotten how he’d been as a child. Well, Nikandros supposed Jord had never known. Nikandros hid the prick of triumph behind a stoic cast and then, because the only time he was comfortable with Akielon-Veretian cultural exchange was on the battlefield, applied himself to a serious answer.

“Honor,” he said. “It’s cowardly to face your opponent protected from head to toe. A soldier should be skilled enough to win without it. And, if your opponent kills you, armor takes the dignity of it away from him. Beating a man who is weak and afraid is nothing.” At Jord’s face—he was not as skeptical of honor as the rest of the Veretians, Nikandros had noticed, though he had his moments—Nikandros relented. “It’s also practicality. Heavy armor inhibits movement and speed, and dangerously overheats in an Akielon summer.”

“But not even pants?” Jord did not sound scandalized, as one of the Veretian courtiers would have been, merely curious.

Nikandros glanced down at his own bare legs. “Sailors do, sometimes, especially the ones off Isthimia. But cloth won’t stop a blade or an arrow, so what would be the point of wearing them to battle? They’d be a hindrance at best. At worst, they’d get into a wound and turn it rancid, and then after you had won you would die anyway.”

Jord examined his own legs, covered from hip to booted heel. He shuffled next to Nikandros and held out a leg next to Nikandros' to compare. Nikandros’ leg was longer, him being taller, but Jord’s thigh was, Nikandros saw with surprise, slightly thicker. It must have been an illusion from the added bulk of cloth. “I couldn’t stand the chafing,” Jord said. “If I wanted my stones scraped off I’d get a sharp-fingernailed whore.”

That reminded Nikandros of something Damen had mentioned, that he’d been meaning to ask. “I heard,” he said, “that the, ah, call houses in Vere are staffed exclusively with women?”

Jord snorted. “That’s not true. We’ve got ones with men and ones with women, same as every—“ he paused. “I guess you don’t separate them like that, here. But anyway, whoever told you that must’ve been either a woman, or a man with a very jealous lover.”  
  
Nikandros made the executive decision to cease that line of thought. “Your armor,” he said. “You don’t have the heat we have, but you’ve got snow on more than the mountains, especially in winters. The metal doesn’t frost over?”

“We wear layers underneath,” said Jord. “What, did you think it was skin-to-metal? And it’s a lot of work to carry that much weight. As long as you keep moving, you keep warm. That’s what we tell the boys, at least, when they complain about doing work in the blizzards and the freezes.” 

“I once told a squire, who was lying about like a limp rag during a long campaign in the South, that my constitution was so good because I sweated it out like a man every day under the sun,” Nikandros said. “Which was not _entirely_ false, but considering he possessed skin nearer the color of yours, he found his results had an additional side effect.”

Jord’s skin, like that of most Veretians, was not as pale as Laurent’s, but it was equally distant from from the dark brown of Nikandros’ own. “He must’ve ended up raw.”  
  
“The heat rash was really what did him in,” said Nikandros. “It made him a better man for it, in the end. He learned how to stop whining. And the men all called him ‘lilybud’ for the rest of the campaign, because he kept peeling.”

What appeared to be a fit of apoplexy took Jord, then. Nikandros waited for an explanation, shifting his helmet to his other arm.

“Sorry,” Jord said, clasping Nikandros on the shoulder to hold himself up. “I wasn’t figuring, out of _your_ mouth, the way you speak. Maybe I got the word wrong. There’s a, well, I guess you’d call it a traditional, Veretian song that uses ‘lilybud’ to refer to a man with a particularly tight—“  
  
“That’s an Akielon song,” said Nikandros, more flabbergasted than upset at the thievery. “It was why the boy was so upset about it.”

Jord was shaking his head. “No, I’m sure it’s Veretian. Comes from the region I was born in, actually.”

“It’s definitely from Akielos,” Nikandros said, frowning. “It doesn’t rhyme like it’s been translated. And our soldiers wouldn’t sing a Veretian song.”  
  
“Our soldiers wouldn’t sing an Akielon,” Jord pointed out. “Maybe it passed over the border to you from some of the trade routes.”  
  
“Maybe it went the opposite way.”  
  
“Neither,” said a woman’s voice. They turned and saw Halvik, who Nikandros had found to be an admirable commander, though entirely unconcerned with propriety. And respect. “It’s Vaskian. And it’s not a man’s pucker it’s describing. It’s a woman’s—“  
  
“Halvik!” One of her soldiers wanted her for something. Halvik turned away, already saying something harsh in her own language, to deal with whatever it was the woman needed.

Nikandros caught Jord’s eye and fought the disconcerting desire to break down into mirth. From the helpless spasm of Jord’s mouth, he was fighting it as well.

 

* * *

  

“You need to stop fucking women,” Laurent said, inserting himself into Nikandros' chambers without preamble.   
  
It was barely dawn. Nikandros spared a moment for silent thanks that he was already awake and dressed, and then bowed precisely the right amount required of him. “Your Highness.”

“It’s undermining your command of my men,” said Laurent, as if he hadn’t noticed the delay in Nikandros’ obeisance, though Nikandros was under no illusions that Laurent had missed a thing. “If we’re going to make this alliance work, my men need to follow you without question. Are you old enough to fuck your own bastard daughters and breed new bastards off them? You might as well tell me. I’ll pass it along to the men so they can stop wondering about it at the morning meal, when they should be worrying about what they stuck their own cocks in last night.”

Why, Nikandros thought mournfully, couldn’t Damen have been a nice, bloodthirsty, warmongering King like so much of his family tree? “I was not aware that the alliance extended its influence to whom I spend my time with,” he said.

“Then you’re more stupid than I took you for,” said Laurent. Nikandros breathed in deeply through his nose. Laurent pretend not to notice this, either. “Every one of us is being watched, closely, even more so than we would have been otherwise. They’re waiting for something to slip, some excuse to send our countries back towards the fighting they’re used to. Damen and myself most of all, of course, but Damen—” Laurent’s iron control over his own reactions was not, quite, when speaking of Damen, and Nikandros relished the hint of exasperation there, disproportionately proud of Damen for being _Damen,_ honest and impatient with complicated politics and therefore wrenching all of Laurent’s carefully constructed plans off-axis.“Damen is not quite so concerned with appearances. Therefore, it falls to you to pull much of that weight.”

Nikandros took a careful step forward. No matter what he was to Damen, Laurent was not _Nikandros'_ lover (oh, horror), or his King. Nikandros might tolerate Laurent’s disrespect of Damen for the sake of the peace (such that it was), but not indefinitely. Laurent’s eyes flicked up and down Nikandros’ body, as good as sneering, but Nikandros knew the message had been received.

Laurent was not, Nikandros ceded grudgingly in the tense seconds that followed, incorrect. Damen would be able to command a throne admirably on his own, but Nikandros' reserve had always allowed for Damen an indulgence that smoothed the way when Damen was being particularly stubborn in the wrong direction. Or particularly lenient, as the case might be, Nikandros thought, noting the distinctly-shaped bruise that Laurent’s high collar did not entirely conceal.

“I see you’ve come around to reason,” Laurent said. Smugly. Infuriatingly. “It would be better if you wouldn’t fuck slaves at all, but I can’t expect that much of you Akielons. Not yet, anyway,” he added, and touched the mark on his throat. Nikandros bit down hard enough on his own tongue to taste blood. “Don’t worry. I’m sure a big strong Kyros like yourself can find _someone_ to warm your bed for you, even with your prospects almost half depleted. Maybe even a Veretian, since your sacrifice is for the alliance.” Laurent’s smile was, as always, two parts weapon, one part snake, and no part warmth. Damen claimed that he had another, but Nikandros had yet to see it.

“As you command,” Nikandros said, not bothering to pretend that the words didn’t grate like sand in his mouth. Laurent graced him with another weapon-snake smile.

“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that it doesn’t matter whether or not the women can actually bear children,” Laurent said, because of course he wasn’t finished yet. “If my men see a feminine form coming from your chambers, without a chaperone, then you’ve fucked her and put a bastard in her and you’re proving them all right about Akielos. If you can’t give up your taste for cunt, there’s a boy—”  
  
“No,” said Nikandros, because no matter what the Prince of Vere thought, such information was not an acceptable playing piece, and such people were themselves, not substitutions. One of his favorites was such, in fact, though he supposed bitterly that now he would not be permitted the comfort of her company. Her hands were particularly skilled. Nikandros closed his eyes and opened them again, and reminded himself that Damen was his King, and his closest friend since childhood, and that Nikandros himself had seen that there was something to Laurent besides venom. “Your Highness.”

The expression on Laurent’s face wiped away as if with a cloth. Nikandros wondered if he had surprised him. “Good,” said Laurent,” and swept out, as if Nikandros' chambers were his own, and Nikandros the unwanted guest inside them.

 

* * *

 

He told Damen.

Damen turned a sickly shade of green. He had not been paying much attention to Nikandros, before then. Getting Jokaste into a wagon had been difficult. Jokaste in general was difficult. Damen, as Nikandros made a point to repeat at every opportunity, had a type.

“Laurent,” Damen said in a clear, ringing voice.

“No, Damianos, don’t—” But it was too late. Laurent had appeared, ubiquitous and unwanted as a winter cough. 

“Yes?” said Laurent, sticky sweet. He touched Damen’s arm in greeting, perfunctory, so light that from anyone else the contact could have been accidental. From Damen’s reaction, Laurent might as well have plastered himself along Damen’s body. Naked.

Nikandros dropped his forehead to the comforting, saddled flank of his horse and groaned.

 

* * *

 

Jord’s body under Nikandros’ hands, against the hard splintered wood of the wagon, for he had insulted Damianos— had _dared—_

_(“You would have reacted the same way if Laurent had come back alone.”)_

 

* * *

 

Kastor was dead, and Damen was King. The full ceremony would have to wait until Damen healed enough to travel to the Kingsmeet, whence Nikandros, using the influence of his own period of service there, had achieved a formal pardon for him. Though the sentries could not have stood against the encompassing might of Damianos and his most loyal, and it would not have mattered, anyway, once Damen had been crowned (for nowhere was a king’s word more sacred than the Kingsmeet), a smoother way would serve Akielos better. As Nikandros had explained.  
  
(It was—strange—coming back there. Everything the same, a place staid in time and dignity, but for the faces of the men. Those that had been Nikandros’, and would return to him after, he was careful not to acknowledge. The sentries of the Kingsmeet had no origin, no names, and no selves; they were a body as one, to protect and to serve. Nikandros laid his palm flat on the sun-washed marble of a column he had often sat beside, when he had taken his leisure, and for a moment let himself yearn for the two years when his life had been simple, and all things had been fine and virtuous, and the annals of antiquity before him had walked, as if waking, again.)

But Akielos needed a monarch. The bells had rung. The documents were drawn up accordingly. A curtailed version of the rite was swiftly invented and executed, and it would have to do for the time being, for Damen could do nothing more strenuous than stand (Laurent protested this much; Damen argued for more). Measured against the traditional Kingsmeet procession, the proceedings were milquetoast, and pleased nobody, but at the end Damen was Nikandros’s King now in name as well as in Nikandros’ heart. When Nikandros looked at him, at Damen—at King Damianos, Exalted of Akielos—his mouth went dry with his majesty.

Kastor was dead, and Laurent had done it, and Nikandros would forever be in his debt for striking the final blow to give Damen back his country, and his home. It was a frustrated type of gratitude, a respect that had not lost the thorns from what it had been before, and though at the proxy coronation Nikandros was focused on Damen (and on the periphery, on keeping Damen safe), one of the few times he glanced at Laurent he turned away to meet Jord’s gaze. _I know that feeling,_ said Jord’s eyes, the upward twist of his mouth. They did not say, _you get used to it._  
  
They said, _good luck._

 

* * *

 

Teaching Laurent how to wrestle like a man was difficult, but not as much so as Nikandros had expected when Laurent came to him and demanded instruction. Laurent applied himself well, and did not shy from the physicality of it, which Nikandros had seen from many men who relied on their swords. He also had a skill for finding the right angle to brace to throw his opponent off of him. Laurent’s insistence on both of them being fully covered was a disadvantage, because it restricted movement and allowed handholds for the other person, but Nikandros had no desire to touch a naked Laurent and had acquiesced to clothing. Laurent’s main problem, which Nikandros could have predicted, was that he thought too much.

“You don’t have time for that,” Nikandros said, as Laurent tried to step back and strategize. “There’s no three feet of steel to separate you from your opponent and give you time to dawdle. If this was a real fight I’d have pinned you twice over by now.”

“Five or six feet, all told, counting my opponent’s weapon,” corrected Laurent. Laurent liked that, correcting people. Especially Nikandros. Nikandros waited until Laurent circled back around and made to grab him, and then twisted Laurent’s arm from the wrist and grasped above his elbow to weaken his grip. Laurent let go, wincing.

“Tell me what I did,” said Nikandros. “I know you were watching.”

“That is not how Damen fights,” Laurent said.

“King Damianos would wrench the hold,” said Nikandros. The deliberate use of Damen’s title provoked an amused exhalation. Laurent had noticed how his use of the intimate name bothered Nikandros, and had been finding extra places to say it in order to annoy him. Before Laurent could speak again, Nikandros demonstrated the most direct way to wrest back control, using the minimum of force against Laurent’s tense limbs. Until he’d started training Laurent, Nikandros had not thought it possible for one body to hold that much tension and not snap. “If it wasn’t a friendly match, he’d break the arm. They’re techniques that force a direct contest of strength, with you at the disadvantage. You’re strong, but you can’t rely on it against every opponent like he can. _I_ can’t. Even Damianos shouldn’t, as much.” Damen had been recently cleared for light exercise, with no riding, strength training, or anything that stretched his torso overmuch, and had been giving Nikandros a headache with his apparent desire to rupture every one of his stitches.

“I know that,” said Laurent. He tried to replicate Nikandros’ maneuver. Nikandros corrected the placement of his hands and allowed Laurent to twist him around. After a moment, to let Laurent set the position into his muscles, he broke free and returned to where he’d started.

“Again.”

Laurent complied.

The worst thing about teaching Laurent was that it wasn’t.Most mother’s sons (and, sometimes, daughters, and once, another) Nikandros taught the basics of wrestling to ran the gamut from arrogant to lethargic, and however Laurent acted outside of the time set aside for the two of them to scuffle on the sawdust, there he paid close attention to what Nikandros showed him and practiced it endlessly. It reminded Nikandros, forcibly, that Laurent had matched Damen in the okton. It was not a sport for men wont to neglect the grueling, endless hours of honing a body to purpose.

Nikandros had even been required to refuse to grapple with Laurent for three days, near the beginning, because Laurent had overextended himself and strained a tendon in his shoulder. Nikandros had been cursed with a pair of royal idiots who refused to pay attention to their physicians. 

It was annoying, to find something of Laurent that reminded Nikandros of Damen, and more so because Nikandros could sense it softening his opinion towards the former, against his wishes. Whether Laurent had planned it or not, Nikandros didn’t know, but at least Laurent’s dedication was genuine.

 

He told Jord about it—Jord having been officially reinstated as Laurent’s Captain, where he belonged— over the simple meal that had been brought to the two of them while they stayed late in Nikandros’ chambers. They were going over security details for the small delegation of Veretian courtiers that had, with customary disregard for Damen’s current condition and the gross inconveniencing of his court, decided to visit the palace and pay their respects to (that was, bother incessantly) the King recently crowned and the Prince that soon would be. “He’s an ice-cocked bitch,” Jord said with evident relish, spearing one of the larger cuts of beef, “But he’s all in. There wouldn’t have been a chance of winning this, otherwise.”

“I find myself thinking that there was no chance, and your Prince made one anyway.” Nikandros could taste the hint of respect in his own voice, and found he didn’t mind it, as much, in Jord’s company. Possibly because Jord agreed whenever Nikandros complained about Laurent’s scheming or his temperament, though Jord had nearly struck him the time he’d called Laurent a bastard. Veretians.

“That’s him,” said Jord, proud. “You should’ve seen him as a child, if you think he’s stubborn now.”

Imagining Laurent as a child was impossible. “You knew him then?”  


Jord cocked his head, arrested in the motion of wiping his mouth on a napkin. “Not like you mean. But I’ve been a soldier for his family for a long time.” He paused. “I have,” he said, “a portrait of him when he was six.”

“No,” said Nikandros. If he was delighted despite himself, at least the delight was vicious.“Where?”

“Camp spoon,” Jord said. “Back in my pack. It was a commemorative gift for his birthday that year, they gave them to the whole army. It’s a good spoon for all that,” he added, as Nikandros felt his cheeks twitch upwards. “Makes for a talking point in front of the fire, too.”

“Or in front of the strategy table.”

Jord made a noise of assent.

“Damianos was exactly as you’d expect, as a child,” Nikandros said. “I think. I was a child too, so I probably misremember. I _do_ remember once one of the cats had to be shaved, for medical treatment, and Damianos shaved his own head in solidarity.”

Something that might have been a laugh was quickly muffled by Jord’s napkin.

It was easy to talk with Jord like this, Nikandros was finding. He did not feel the need to watch himself around Jord as much as he did the other Veretians, which was dangerous, but Nikandros needed someone to be comfortable with. He had always known that once Damen became King he would lose part of that with him. Nikandros had not expected to find the fledgeling possibility of its replacement in the Captain of an enemy army.

Not enemies anymore, and save us all, Nikandros reminded himself. He shook his head. “I still think it’ll be easier to watch them if they all come in the front gate,” he said, leaning forward to tap one of the scrolls. “Even with the reconstruction.”  
  
“The south-southwest is more defensible and you know it,” said Jord, resuming the argument they’d been having before the arrival of the food.  
  
“They’d have to pass through the farmlands,” Nikandros said, and they were off.

 

* * *

 

The Veretian delegation arrived. They brought their pets.

“I would not have expected you to be so disapproving,” Jord said in an undertone, leaning against the wall beside Nikandros. The implied _because you too are highborn_ was blatant. Nikandros, who was concentrating on concealing his disgust, ignored it. He had weathered Vannes, and the others, though he had not liked it.   
  
It was one thing for a slave, who had been trained their whole life, to sit by a master’s chair and preen at the touch of a hand, or to exhibit sensuality during the daylight hours (though with much more subtlety than these lewd Veretian performances).  Such was the profession of a slave, and Nikandros, who made a point to be kind and offer praise when it was due, had never lost sight of that fact. It was a comfortable arrangement; exquisitely trained subservience in exchange for food, lodging, protection. For a person who had no codification, however, who submitted to, and even relished, such treatment (such _public_ treatment) for no other reason than that they were too lazy to find a respectable profession, it ranged from disgraceful to obscene. 

“Bought loyalty is no loyalty at all,” Nikandros said. He took a sip of wine to cover the impulse to let his lip curl. Damen, with his inherent likability and his position, had been able to survive letting his emotions play out across his face. Nikandros was not so lucky.   
  
“Most loyalty is bought,” said Jord, and his voice was so suddenly weary that Nikandros looked up. Jord was not watching him, but gazing out over the feast, and his jaw was set in a way that added years to his age. The silver threads in his beard and at his temples, premature, gleaming faintly in the firelight, did nothing to lessen the illusion. Yet he did not look frail; in profile, the rough angles of Jord’s face held a sternness that was almost noble.

His words could have been easily taken as an insult, but Jord’s stance made Nikandros think that perhaps Jord had not spoken deliberately. “Not mine,” Nikandros said at last, making it a firm statement rather than the warning it might otherwise have been.

Jord laughed, short, doglike, and apparently as much a surprise to himself as it was to Nikandros. “No,” he said. He made an aborted movement, as if to turn and meet Nikandros’ eye, but did not complete it and remained looking out. “I never thought it was, yours.”

There was a lull, not uncomfortable if not particularly comfortable, either, while they both watched Pallas turn a series of cartwheels, alternating between one hand and two. His chiton ended up over his head, as it always did during his acrobatics. Akielon and Veretian men clapped and cat-called indiscriminately, Lazar loudest among them. Nikandros touched the wine cup to his lips again but did not drink.

“Mine is not, either,” Jord said suddenly, and harshly. His hands clenched. Nikandros saw the pressed line of his mouth, the spots of red on his cheekbones, and wondered if Jord’s Veretian Prince had ever deigned to compliment his men for a job well done.

“I never thought it was,” Nikandros said quietly. Quietly, but not over-gently, the way he would speak to a Captain of his own. Jord shot him a look of frank disbelief, but the line of his body eased into something more befitting flesh than stone. 

The incongruous desire to see Jord in command of lands of his own rose in Nikandros, and was just as quickly dismissed. Jord lacked the necessary distance between himself and his men that aristocracy required. He was too invested in the minutiae of his soldier’s daily lives, and too sympathetic. He would not put the complaints of his men before the good of the campaign—Nikandros would have never allowed Damen to retain Jord as Laurent’s Captain otherwise, regardless of how much the Veretian migraine fluttered his eyelashes—but he would dwell on this complaints longer than was necessary to ensure the control and loyalty of his men, and and let that worry affect his confidence. Somehow, Nikandros was having difficulty summoning the requisite distain.

This time when Nikandros lifted his wine, he drained the cup.

 

* * *

  

Usually when he and Jord talked strategy—or, as was happening more frequently, complained and drank wine, either good (if the wine was Nikandros’) or awful (if it was Jord’s), they met in public or in Nikandros’ chambers. When Jord stopped by his own rooms to pick up a buckle that had been delivered, therefore, Nikandros took the excuse to look around.

The rooms Jord had been granted in Ios (for while Damen recuperated, Ios was where Laurent had based himself; though Marlas would become the seat of the mad conjoined nation that Damen and Laurent envisaged, and Nikandros felt the astringent irony of his own reassignment, Marlas required much ere it would be equipped enough to serve) were like their inhabitant, square and utilitarian. Unlike their inhabitant, they were stuffy; Jord, apologizing awkwardly, said that he didn’t like leaving the windows unlocked. Altogether the allotted space was smaller than would have been customary for a man who was, despite his common birth, second-in-command of Laurent’s army. When Nikandros said as much Jord rubbed a hand behind his neck and confessed that he’d asked for these rooms after being offered grander.

It was something Nikandros had not considered a man would do. Yet it was clear Jord was not abstaining in order to pretend a humility he didn’t have. Jord seemed to rattle around his own rooms like a bead in a children’s puzzle game, and was clearly uncomfortable that there was more than one. He hadn’t even draped the walls with tapestries or swathes of silk, but left them empty, impersonal. “You should have been born an Akielon,” Nikandros said, seeing this.

“And you should’ve been born a pigfucker,” Jord said, offended. Nikandros laughed. After a moment, Jord cracked a smile. “All right,” he allowed. “I’m not used to it. Not all of us are fed from the teat on gold and buttresses. It’s been barracks for me since I was a boy, or tents.” With a dubious toe Jord lifted the corner of the heavy plush rug that dominated the floor in front of his couch. “I don’t want to think about cleaning this.”

Nikandros, who never did, blinked. “There’s slaves for that. Servants, I suppose, for you.” Damen, for all his stubborn-headedness, had realized that he couldn’t suddenly free legions of slaves and leave them without means to survive and the palace without a large portion of its workforce. The concession for now had been that the Veretians would not be served by slaves, and Akielons could choose or not. No Akielon besides Damen had chosen not, as far as Nikandros could tell.

Jord squinted up at him. “You’ve never cleaned a rug. Not even on campaign. Not even as a _boy_ on campaign.”  
  
“We don’t bring rugs on campaign,” said Nikandros, still annoyed from thinking about Damen and Veretians and changes. A horse carrying a rug could carry sacks of grain just as easily. Unless they were planning on _decorating_ enemies to death. Given the state of Laurent’s command tent, and now his chambers, perhaps that was part of regular Veretian strategy. He’d have to bring that information to the next military debriefing.

There was a bathroom—Nikandros could see it through one of the two open doors coming off of Jord’s main chamber—but Jord had dragged the wash basin and stand out of it and set them against the corner opposite his bed. A pattern along the rim caught Nikandros’ eye. He walked over and lifted the basin, checking the rim and then flipping it over to trace the maker’s mark underneath, noting absently the artistry of the figures painted on the sides. “This is an antique,” he said to Jord.  
  
“Oh _no,_ ” Jord said, and sat down heavily on the couch. “I dropped it on the floor this morning.”

Nikandros bit the inside of his cheek. Sure enough, his fingers found the chip, a jagged imperfection in the otherwise peerlessly smooth ceramic. At age seven, Nikandros had overturned an entire serving set even older than this ( _fourth century!_ the Master of the Cupboard had wailed repeatedly. Nikandros had thought them ugly and, after being denied an outing, had fixed on them as a fine target for his childish ire). When he had mastered himself, Nikandros set the basin down and came around to sit in the wooden chair beside Jord. “You’re not this nervous when you drink out of _my_ cups, or put your feet all over _my_ rugs.”

“Those are yours,” said Jord. “I’ll be careful, but if I ruin them, it’s your fault for letting the me use them.” He leaned back and passed a hand over his face, and then clapped Nikandros briefly on the arm to show that the words had been said in jest, if Nikandros had not already known.“That basin—all of this—it’s mine, or, on loan to me, at least. If I break it, it’s my responsibility.”  
  
“If you break it, they’ll give you another,” Nikandros said.  
  
Jord was still upset. “You can’t make antique pottery out of shits and dreams.”  
  
“This is a palace,” said Nikandros. “It’s what we do. That and house kings.”

“But who got them there,” said Jord in a different tone: irritation edging into fondness. Muted reverence, also, and when Nikandros looked over Jord still had his head tilted back on the top edge of the couch, the shadow from the hand he’d returned to his forehead hiding half of it. What Nikandros could see was looking back at him. 

The air in the room thickened with gravity. With the wistful knowledge that what they had done, what they were _doing,_ was part of history, and would be, in the way of all wars for for ascension, written down and either remembered or forgotten. Nikandros hoped it would be remembered.

“We did,” said Nikandros, and the words dropped to the bottom of the moment like stones in a jug, steadying there, rippling outward from the two of them. Jord blew out a long, slow breath that Nikandros, in the still room, was almost close enough to feel. For an instant Nikandros felt the phantom pain of every injury he had taken for Damen’s sake. “We did.”

 

* * *

 

“He told me to convince you about the slaves,” Jord said bluntly when he found Nikandros. There was no ambiguity as to who “He” was. Nikandros, who was three-quarters of the way through a complicated stretching routine he’d been learning from the Vaskian women during their visit ( _with_ a chaperone, because Laurent, and so Nikandros had not been able to accept the tempting offer they had extended), flipped himself back upright and pushed his hair out of his face. He deliberately did not sigh, though he wanted to.

Jord was examining Nikandros' bare chest—Nikandros had unpinned his chiton to the waist, for convenience— with interest. Nikandros raised his eyebrows at him, and Jord, instead of flushing, stepped closer and pointed. “No final, secret tattoos for you, either?”

“No,” said Nikandros. He looked down at himself and touched a scar that ran for a finger’s length down the side of his abdomen. “King Damianos tried to pack this one with dirt, when we were children, the way that he’d heard Patran women did in days of old. We’d heard something similar about Veretians and shit, actually.”

The ribbing was familiar enough that it had lost its bite. Jord snorted. “Funny, we heard Akielons did it with the monthly blood of their women.”

“No, it’s with the first battle-blood of our squires,” Nikandros said. His hair tickled his back and shoulders; the leather thong he’d been using to tie it had snapped. He’d have had a slave to replace it for him if it weren't for Laurent, and that was the very reason Jord was here, wasn’t it, gawping at Nikandros' unbound hair like he’d never seen curls before. Nikandros, again, refused to sigh.

(He was saving his sighs for Damen, these days.)

“What does His Highness want you to woo me with,” said Nikandros, weary, and frowned at Jord’s double-take. The man should know enough Akielon by now to understand Nikandros was using the colloquial conjugation of _woo,_ and not the suggestive one. More, he should know _Nikandros_ well enough. Not that Nikandros had expended much effort at all in that direction for anyone, lately. Knowing his bed had been subject to royal sanctions made him less keen to contemplate filling it. Somehow. The stream of attractive and politically bland men that had magically replaced all his usual couriers and cupbearers and that could not have more plainly had Laurent’s stamp on them if they had been wearing it (some of them were, his crest) also put a damper on any amorous sentiments. Nikandros could do his own choosing, thank you very much.

“I don’t know,” said Jord. He crossed his arms. Nikandros allowed himself a small, vindictive victory in seeing the man’s annoyance at his prince. “The implication was that you’d be more likely to listen to me, but you’re a Kyros. I was stupid enough to follow my Prince on a campaign that should’ve ended in all our deaths, but I’m not stupid enough to tell you how to run your household.”

At least Jord understood that. Some other people could have benefited from his example. Nikandros walked over to the rough-hewn bench on the side of the outdoor ring of training sand he’d been working in and nodded for Jord to sit beside him. Jord did, warily. 

“You’re right,” said Nikandros. “The only person I’m willing to take orders for regarding my household is the King, and those after consideration. Kyroi have a different relationship to the King than your lords have with yours, I think,” he said, looking to Jord for confirmation. Jord nodded in the hesitant way of a man who had only second-hand knowledge at best. “A Kyros’s lands—and his household—they belong to the King, as do all things, but the direct control of them is in the hands of the kyroi. Too much management from the King in that area means discontent.” Nikandros broke off. He had been lecturing Jord, he noticed with some chagrin, and Jord had the expression of a man who was impatient with it.

Not stupid enough to tell him how to run his household, Nikandros remembered. “Willing obedience for the things that matter is better than grudging obedience for every small detail,” he said, instead of the lengthy explanation he’d been about to embark upon. He didn’t normally feel the need to defend his actions, much less his thoughts. Perhaps it was time he invited another summer ward from one of the other kyroi, for he was evidently in need of someone to declaim lessons to.

“Flog a man for refusing to set up his tent straight, but not for how it reeks,” Jord said with a grin, and Nikandros laughed. Of course, Jord would understand that aspect. He may not own land, but soldiers, especially new ones, were more belligerent than townsfolk.   
  
“I know he— _they—_ are have plans to make the change law eventually,” Nikandros admitted, leaning back on his hands. “But until then? My household is mine to do with as I wish.”

Jord picked a splinter from the edge of the bench and rolled it between his fingers, staring at it as if it were a puzzle he was trying to figure out. “I understand you need to run your own,” he said at length. The splinter was about the length of a toothpick; discordant to the mood of the scene, Nikandros remembered slamming Jord against a wagon after Damen had come back alone from the Kingsmeet. That wood had left splinters almost as long in Nikandros’ arm, where he had scraped it, pinning Jord there. 

Jord snapped the splinter in half and cast it aside, focusing again on Nikandros, who in turn focused again on the present. Strange that the memory had not roused his anger again. “What I don’t understand is why this. Does the prospect of paying servants offend you so much?”  


“No,” said Nikandros, surprised. “There are paid servants here—cooks, physicians, others—you’ve seen them. It’s…” how to explain this, to someone who came from a country like Vere? “In return for their service, we promise slaves a place to live, and that they will be tended and taken care of. They subsist on the Kyros’— or the Crown’s—money, even if it doesn’t pass through their hands. But coffers aren’t endless, and if it comes down to either paying a slave or giving them food and shelter… I don’t want to force my people to make that choice.” They were words Nikandros had said to himself, even written down, in preparation of Damen asking him this very question. It was strange to hear them out loud. They were less refined than he’d thought. Nikandros made a note to go over his prepared speeches more thoroughly.

Jord was frowning at Nikandros' face, now, the way he had the splinter. “The paid servants buy their own meat and beds, don’t they?”

“Yes,” said Nikandros. “And we can keep costs low _because_ we aren’t paying the slaves wages. If I gave all of my slaves even a low, fixed wage, which I won’t, I’ll give more when the time comes, because some especially have done me honor in their service—” Jord seemed confused by this “—I’d have to not only charge them for room and board, to keep from going into debt, but raise the price for everyone. And no matter how much care I took, there would be people out on the street at the end of it. There are people now who have full stomachs every night, that won’t once your—once our kings force this change.”

It was an issue Damen was facing already, for his own sake. Damen would be forced to levy higher taxes from all the kyroi this fall, and not just because of the recent war and ascension. The kyroi sensed it, and were not pleased. The servants were fearful of being turned out for want of revenue to keep them. The slaves…

His thoughts were interrupted by Jord speaking again. “Shouldn’t it be their right to choose whether they take the coin and risk having to leave, or stay without pay?”  
  
It was far from the first time Jord had said something bordering on censure to Nikandros. Nikandros had of late become reluctant to disallow it. He had found that when it wasn’t just Jord blustering and kicking up a fuss because he was angry, Jord’s insight into matters was a useful tool.

Even when those matters touched deep. “They are _my_ _people_ ,” Nikandros said. He had leaned back forward at some point, hands closed over each other on his knee. “It is _my_ honor and duty to protect them, and to provide for them. If they make the wrong choice, and I cannot support them, and they starve, then I have failed them.”

Jord was silent for a moment, his brow and mouth pinched, his eyes unwavering from Nikandros' own. “I knew a man,” he said. Jord’s entire face sagged, and turned tired, and wistful, and held a kind of sadness that Nikandros knew could only come from one thing. Nikandros laid a hand on the bench between them, not quite an offering, but an overture of comfort. Jord smiled at him, a small smile, but grateful. Not full of weapons or snakes at all. 

“A young man,” Jord continued. His voice was a rasp, soft leather on softer. “Nineteen, and not old enough for all he was—all that he was given. There was a choice that was taken away from him, and one he was given, and even if he had been given both I think he…I think he still might have made the wrong one.” Jord swallowed, and ah, Nikandros thought, Aimeric. That made a great number of things more clear. “He might have chosen wrong the second time,” Jord ploughed ahead, “But I think he preferred the having of it, that choice, all things considered. Even if he’d ended up choosing worse than wrong.” At the end Jord turned his eyes away, his fingers finding another splinter in the bench. Abruptly he stood and left.

Nikandros watched his back, wide but with a posture brittle unto breaking, until it was out of sight.

 

* * *

 

“Is that for Jord?” asked Damen.

“Yes,” Nikandros said, rolling the parchment. It was a list of weaponry, updated since the last large-scale delivery from one of the better blacksmiths. Damen smiled at Jord sunnily, his dimple flashing, and, for no reason Nikandros could discern, elbowed him in the ribs. Tomorrow, Damen and Laurentwould be leaving on a grand weekend getaway that Nikandros was supposed to know nothing about, and Damen had been incorrigible for days. It was not even the first time, since Damen had regained health enough to sit ahorse. Nikandros had vetted the carts and the horses and the men and the contacts as best he could, and then, when he’d passed Jord sitting on a bench, bruise-eyed and strained, gone over it all again with him, because Jord had been doing the same thing from Laurent’s end. 

“I’m going with them, next time,” Jord had promised as the hours extended into the wee morning, late—or early—enough for the whole world to feel thin and stretched. “I’ll lash myself to the belly of one of their horses if I have to.” Nikandros, who could not leave Ios to fend for herself, no matter how much he wanted to nag Damen for his disregard for duty and personal safety the whole of his untimely vacation, had thanked Jord sincerely.

“You spend a lot of time with Jord,” said Damen, hopping up onto the wide sill of the window, still smiling. The green of the leaves behind him was vibrant. _Exalted,_ Nikandros thought wryly, as Damen’s feet dangled. And yet he was. Even lounging in the window like a careless youth, Damen commanded the room. There was always some part of Nikandros, now, that wanted to go to his knees whenever Damen was in his line of sight. And yet Nikandros had grown up with Damen, and there was a part equally as large that wanted to perch beside Damen as they had as boys, sharing a bag of apples between them and trying to hit the kitchenmaids passing below with the cores.

There were things other than the whims of his King, however, that now required Nikandros’ attention. Nikandros tried to put into his glare all of these, and impress how much he didn’t have time for Damen’s antics. Damen, being Damen, met the glare mildly and without remorse. “He’s the Captain of the Veretian army. We have a lot to talk about.”  
  
“Nik.” In two breaths Damen was before Nikandros, plucking the list away from him and taking his hands in his own. “Can it wait? You haven’t slept, these last few nights. I can tell. There’s something bothering you. Let me take you for a ride, or go a couple rounds on the sawdust.Something to help.”  
  
Nikandros hadn’t been _sleeping_ because of _Damen,_ and his damn fool secrets and tow-headed lover and larking off and leaving Nikandros to deal with everything. That wasn’t fair, Nikandros told himself, as Damen stood there, holding his hands, waiting for Nikandros to tell him what was wrong. Nikandros had dealt with worse, far worse, before. And Damen deserved some time away. He _had_ been working every hour, and then some, and before this frivolous plan it had been apparent that he was on the verge of exhaustion-induced collapse. No, Nikandros had been agitated even before he’d learned of the Damen-Laurent getaway scheme.

Damn him, Damen had always been able to get anything from Nikandros when he put on those eyes. “There’s a faction,” Nikandros confessed, the words weighing heavy on his tongue. “A small one, but insistent. I can deal with them. I didn’t want to bother you with it.”  
  
Damen’s grip tightened. “For Kastor, still?”  
  
“Yes,” said Nikandros. The way the blood left Damen’s face hit Nikandros like a physical blow. “We knew this would happen, Damianos.” Whether Kastor was alive or not. “This is a tentative set, neither big nor influential. _I can deal with them._ ”

The Damen before his father’s death would not have believed it, would have called Nikandros a liar—had—could not have comprehended that disloyalty lay in his own people. The Damen before Nikandros now nodded once, tightly, and stepped back. “Who are they?”

If Nikandros told Damen, it would be a massacre, and the court could not handle another one so soon. “They aren’t planning a strike until months into your ascension, at least,” Nikandros said. “Possibly a full year. I was hoping to wait, to see who seemed a sympathetic ear. Maybe to give some of them the chance to remember their integrity.”  
  
“Who. Are. They.” Damen was shaking, and Nikandros realized that Damen was not looking at him, but rather through him, his hands curled into fists and his mouth a thin line. It was a look Nikandros had seen on men who had the battle sickness, men for whom the blood and gore andthe screams of dying men and horses had become too much and something in their brain never left the battlefield. Until now, Nikandros hadn’t considered that familial betrayal and subsequent infliction of slavery could have the same effect.

In that moment Nikandros would have killed anyone he had to, to stop Damen from feeling this. He swallowed to clear the sour taste from his tongue. “Damianos,” Nikandros said, stepping forward, slowly, re-entering Damen’s space. “I make this my promise to you. I can handle this. It will not happen again. Damen.” He touched Damen lightly on the wrist. Damen flinched away, covering his face, and then his eyes cleared and he straightened. From the set of his jaw Nikandros could see he was deep in shame.

It would make it worse to draw attention to whatever humiliation Damen felt, baseless though it was. There were men at fault but Damen was not one of them. Unbidden the words, fresh in his memory, came to Nikandros’s mind: _there was a choice that was taken away from him._

“A ride,” said Nikandros, reaching out to place a hand on Damen’s shoulder, slowly so Damen could reject it. Damen never had before, had always been open, even exuberant, with his affection, and the flinch from earlier had pierced Nikandros to the heart. The relief, when this time Damen leaned into the touch, was as sharp. Even in the tent after those first games with Laurent’s army, when Nikandros had torn the pin from Damen’s shoulder and exposed his back, Damen had never recoiled from him. Until a moment ago. “You mentioned one. You’re right. I need the chance to clear my head. I’m becoming too mired in schemes and cobwebs, here.”  
  
“Now I know you’re overtired, if you’re telling me I’m right about something.” Damen’s smile was weak, but present. “Hawks or hounds?”  
  
“Hawks,” said Nikandros. Damen liked to watch them soar. Indeed, Damen’s face softened into a joy less strained, with an edge of anticipation. His dimple returned.

“I’ll get the horses. You deliver your letter to Jord.”  
  
“It’s a list of weaponry,” said Nikandros, fruitlessly, for Damen, taking all his magnificent, exasperating Kingly presence, had already left the room.

 

* * *

 

The man was not even drunk, which would have at least allowed Nikandros to give the lookers-on an excuse to exchange their embarrassment for ridicule. “Got a taste for it, now,” the man said, passing by where Jord and Nikandros were discussing the stability of Fortaine, a map of the keep and surrounding fields spread out on the low table between them. Outside, the map held down with weights, because the breeze was pleasant and the topic unconfidential. “Now you’ve had a noble mouth around your cock, you can’t rest until you’ve spread for one. Or was it you who spread for Aimeric, and now you need another nobleman to plug your hole?”

Nikandros hit the man, calmly, with his open hand. “When you speak to us, you will be respectful. You’ll spend until next morning in the dungeon. No water, no food, and no blankets.” With his right hand Nikandros gestured a guard forward to lift the man from the dirt where he’d fallen from Nikandros’ strike. When disrespect was an annoyance, rather than a threat, Nikandros had been making an effort to find alternate punishments than the whip. He was painfully cognizant that he must treat Akielon and Veretian soldiers the same, and Nikandros had found that flaying Veretians made him itch to enact revenge for Damen’s back on each and every one of them. A commander who disciplined for his own enjoyment lacked discipline himself. 

“I don’t need you to defend my honor _,”_ Jord spat when the man had been carted away.

 Nikandros, who had been about to pose a question about Fortaine’s granaries, stared at him. “I was bringing an errant soldier back to order,” he said. “Did you want to do it yourself?” That would be a surprise. Jord and Nikandros had agreed that all the men would be subject both of their orders.

Now Jord looked confused, the affront leaving him. “For what, a bit of guff? I’d slap him around, or give him as good back and a couple hours hard labor, if he had so much time to spare, not lock him up and leave him to stew in it. I need him to do what he’s told and not argue. I don’t care if he’s got a pretty mouth while doing it.”

“It’s insubordination,” Nikandros pointed out. In a public place, no less, in front of the rest of both Jord and Nikandros’ men.

Jord shrugged. “Nothing I haven’t heard before. Or said.” Something of Nikandros’ thoughts must have shown on his face, because Jord grinned. “Don’t tell me I’ve offended your delicate lordly sensibilities. If you don’t think the men have had you over half the camp, and under you in their heads, every night since you arrived in Ravenel, then I’ve got a few things to tell you about the way soldiers talk.”

“I thought they spent every night praising my name,” said NIkandros drily. Jord’s amusement gave him time to hide the fact that he was more discomfited than he wanted to let on. It was no secret that soldiers’ speech was foul, especially concerning their commanders, but even if Nikandros were lowborn he would had been granted a deference due to his rank. That was not, it seemed, the norm in Vere. And there was another thing. “What he said about Aimeric—”  
  
“Nothing I haven’t heard before,” repeated Jord shortly. He softened. Slightly; it was difficult for a mountain crag to seem soft. “They’ll talk, and they’ll forget about it, eventually. They’ll forget sooner the less I show I’m bothered by it.”

“And are you bothered?”

Jord didn’t respond.

 

* * *

 

Four weeks before Laurent’s ascension, Damen and Laurent disappeared on a clandestine mission with a scarce handful of men and no armor because neither of them cared whether or not stress would rupture a vessel in Nikandros’ brain before an enemy sword could fell him, protecting them.   
  
They refused to let Jord go with them. Jord argued. Nikandros argued. They regrouped and argued together. What they gained was a verbal dressing-down, a lesson (far past unneeded, by now) in royal obstinacy, and the ability to choose the guards that _were_ taken along. By the time he and Jord were dismissed, in twin tones that brooked no further debate, Nikandros was fatigued, ravenous, and of a mind to sneak into the King’s apartments in the middle of the night and smother them both.

Outside, Jord offered him a piece of flatbread wrapped around hot lamb and vegetables. 

“How,” said Nikandros.   
  
“A boy was passing,” said Jord. A different man, at a different time, might have sounded shy. Jord was simply drained. A second flatbread was held closer to his chest, a large bite already missing from the top. “He was carrying a basket of them. I’m not sure who for, and I didn’t ask.”  
  
Nikandros could have embraced him. He took the bread and started eating. The hot lamb turned out to be lukewarm lamb, but Nikandros was too hungry to care. Telling kings and princes that they were being foolish was a reliable way to build up an appetite.  
  
“Sometimes,” said Jord, in a careful voice that told Nikandros all he needed to know about how much Jord wanted to scream, “I think about becoming a farmer.”

Nikandros said, “If you still mean to lash yourself under a packhorse, tell me, so I can help.”

  

The object of the mission had not factored in the discussion, but only because Nikandros knew it was a dispute he would not win, not because it had been hidden from him. Damen, after he and Laurent had returned the last time and he had been subject to Nikandros’ disapproval, had this time told Nikandros all. The following night, as his King and his King’s Prince departed, Nikandros watched the slaves that attended him. He watched them as they brought and cleared his dinner, lit the lamps and undressed him for bed, their eyes downcast, their gestures elegant and deferential. He wondered what thoughts they would have, if they had been told, as well.   
  
The bedslave waiting for him after the others had left was beautiful, his eyelids and lips shining gold. As he had done increasingly since Laurent’s bed-partner constraint, and now more often than not, Nikandros kissed the slave once on the top of the head, stroked his hair, and gently bid him go.

The absence of Damen, as always, Nikandros felt as an emptiness in his own chest. As he sat on the bed, idly tossing a coin (Damen’s face, stamped in gleaming metal) up into the air and catching it, Nikandros replayed Jord’s conversation about Aimeric in his mind’s eye, and over it the image of Damen flinching back from him rose, again and again, overlapping and melding until it was Damen’s mouth speaking Jord’s words, making them his own: _there was a choice that was taken away from me. I would have preferred the having of it._

 

* * *

 

The question needed to be asked. It had waited too long already, and Damen was not going to answer it—and there were parts of it, furthermore, that Nikandros could have asked a Crown Prince that he could not, _would_ not, ask his King. The knowledge was nonetheless necessary, and when Damen and Laurent returned Nikandros made his way to Jord’s room and knocked on the door.

“I told you if you came by sniveling again I’d strip your rank,” came the answer from within. The door was thrown open, and Jord, blinking, took in the sight of a Kyros in full court regalia holding a jug of wine. “Oh. My apologies. I thought you were the bitch who’s been bothering me about invisible rats in the barracks,” Jord said. He started to smile, and then looked closer at Nikandros' face. The light left his eyes. Jord knew why Nikandros was here.

“I was wondering if it’d be me you went to,” Jord said, settling on the low couch before the brazier. Nikandros inclined his head and sat beside him. Knowing he had to speak made it no less difficult. Instead, he proffered the wine and tried to collect himself while Jord took a full, long swig.

“My King,” Nikandros said, and then, “Damen,” because that was the knife’s point of the question, and he needed the answer to the whole but he did not think his heart could survive without knowing the apex, first. “How was he treated when he was in Vere?”  
  
“When he was a slave, you mean,” said Jord. He took another pull of the wine, shorter, measured.

Nikandros’ question had not been ambiguous. Jord was giving Nikandros a chance to back out of the question, and Nikandros was struck by how fiercely he appreciated the gesture. Yet as much as he did not want to know, he needs must, so he nodded again and took the wine back for a draught of his own.

“Cruelly,” said Jord, and he was a good man, so he tried to make his voice gentle when he said it. Nikandros took a deep breath, dropped his hands in his lap, and waited for Jord to continue. “You’ve seen how the Prince is with his enemies. For the man who killed his brother…” Jord trailed off.

“He was wearing the cuff of a pleasure slave,” Nikandros said, his throat raw. He tipped his head forward and let his hair spill around his face, hiding it. “He’s _still_ wearing it. Tell me he didn’t. That he.” It did not bear saying aloud.

“They weren’t fucking properly until he was out of the harem, and we were on the road, ” Jord said. “That much was apparent.”

“ _Tell me,_ ” said Nikandros, dragging the woods, hooked and bloody, from the core of him. “Jord.”

Jord was silent.

It was not until he felt the weight of Jord’s hand on his arm that Nikandros realized he was shaking. He allowed himself to lean into it. Without the grounding of human touch, Nikandros might fly completely apart. “I cannot forgive your Prince for this,” Nikandros said, felt Jord’s fingers stiffen. “I’m sorry. I know he has your loyalty, and I…there are things of him that I respect, but I _can’t,_ not this.”

Beside him, Jord had gone completely still. Nikandros could feel it. For a wild, bitter moment he thought Jord might stab him, and thought how ignoble a death it would be, bleeding out in the chambers of a Veretian captain for an ill-timed word so soon after following his King to glorious and righteous victory. When Jord took a breath Nikandros tensed, readying himself for the retaliation, but when Jord spoke it was not to defend Laurent.

“I had another Prince, once,” Jord said. His voice was tight, matching the way his grip winched down on Nikandros' shoulder. “Yours killed him.”

The flash of rage the words incited was heady. It would be so easy to turn and beat Jord to a pulp for disrespecting Damen. It would not be the first time Nikandros had done such a thing. And Jord was a seasoned fighter; it would be altogether a match, to strain Nikandros' muscles in an honorable scrap rather than force himself to go through with the reason he had come here. For a moment Nikandros pretended he could allow himself the simplicity, and the release, of such an action. Even as Nikandros’ blood heated, however, he knew he could not engage. That Nikandros had, if he were honest, not much pretext for it, as Jord had spoken nothing but the truth, if in a less-than-reverent tone. Jord had proven himself an invaluable asset and worthy of Nikandros’ respect. If Nikandros fought him, Nikandros would be in the wrong.

And—even if he was having a difficult time remembering it right now—Nikandros _liked_ Jord. He was an honorable man, and good company.

Nikandros would not apologize, but he could steer the conversation back to its intended purpose, though it made his teeth clench around the acrid taste of bile. “Nonetheless,” he said, “I would know what you can tell me. If neither of us can find forgiveness, we can perhaps find at least candor.”  
  
The wary relaxation of Jord’s body recalled the lingering suspicion of a hound brought to heel, who nonetheless wished to make his dissatisfaction known. It was intolerable to wait, without answers, for the full unfolding. Nikandros tolerated it. By the time Jord seemed ready to speak Nikandros’ nails were digging into the flesh of his own thighs.

Jord used his free hand to draw one of Nikandros’ away, and, with equal parts reluctance and relief, Nikandros let him. He could never show this reaction to Damen, in either of the ways Nikandros knew him. To put the onus of comforting Nikandros on Damen, who deserved both that comfort himself and the respect of discretion, was something Nikandros would have taken a sword to himself before considering.

“I was his guard, when,” Jord said. His hands were dry, and warm, and made for hard work. Honest hands. Nikandros had been allowed few enough of those, lately. “We thought he was just a soldier. It seems strange now to think that I knew him like that. That I didn’t see him for who he was.”  
  
“He had just weathered the death of his father and the betrayal of his brother,” Nikandros said, more a whisper than a full statement. It was as close to a concession as he could come. Jord heard it and, blessedly, didn’t push.

“I’d never been that close to a slave before,” Jord continued instead. “I’d seen them, when Patras came to visit, but always from a distance. The other slaves that were taken were given to the Prince’s whoreson uncle—” Nikandros felt his knuckles creak around Jord’s hand, had to take a moment to remember how to loosen them “—and so we didn’t have much part with them. Most of the time we spent watching over him while he was chained in one of the rooms.”  
  
Nikandros tried to imagine someone, anyone, keeping Damen chained up for weeks, and couldn’t. It wasn’t that Nikandros thought it hadn’t happened. He knew it had. It was that the image didn’t make sense.“I’ll bet he hated that.”

“Largest gilt chain I ever saw,” Jord said. “We used to try to figure out how many months of salary we could get for selling it, even if was just covered iron. Damen said there were bigger in Akielos, but I didn’t believe him until we came here.”

The familiar name was an inexcusable slight, but it was also likely a slip, and Jord had, as he’d said, known Damen before he’d known King Damianos. Nikandros let go of Jord’s hand, collecting himself, but allowed the touch on his shoulder to remain. If Jord had tried to cajole him, or to claim that Damen had enjoyed his situation, Nikandros was self-contained enough to recognize that his ire would have led them to blows. Like common soldiers, Nikandros chided himself, and realized he no longer counted Jord among those ranks.

Jord’s deflection here was both to allow Nikandros to calm down and to offer yet another choice for an out. It was a piece of emotional shrewdness such that Nikandros was, against his initial assumptions, coming to expect from Jord. It rankled Nikandros to realize that the reprieve had been needed. But he had come here for a reason, and Nikandros, Kyros lately of Delpha now of Ios, did not back down.

“Start from the beginning,” Nikandros said, and Jord did.

 

When it was over Nikandros felt wrung out, ragged like a towel used to frayed edges. He wanted to scream. He wanted to beat down Laurent’s door and kill him, except that Laurent’s door was also Damen’s. He wanted to weep. He ached all the way from the roots of his hair down to his fingertips; in the vague back of his mind Nikandros saw it must be because he had been clenching his arms and fists and jaw for the past however many minutes (or hours, it felt like hours) without relaxing. Jord’s hand must have been broken by now, or at least badly sprained, yet when Nikandros tried to pull away and murmur and apology Jord held him fast and eased him up to standing with the gentleness of a mother ewe to her newborn lamb.

It was awful. Nikandros couldn’t do anything, couldn’t fix it, couldn’t even hurt Laurent because that would hurt Damen even more, and Jord was treating him like an invalid. He opened his mouth to protest and closed it when Jord touched the corner of his eye with the pad of his thumb. It came away wet.

“Guess I’ve found the one thing to make you cry,” Jord said, quiet enough that even had they not been alone, a person standing beside them couldn’t have heard him. Nikandros was not ashamed of his tears; Damen deserved them, for what he had endured. He might have been embarrassed to shed them in front of Jord, except that he was too tired. He didn’t want Jord’s gentle touch on his arm leading him across the room, didn’t want to take Jord’s bed and lie down on it, didn’t want Jord to sit beside him and lay a hand on his forehead, but Jord did it all anyway, and Nikandros could not find the energy to protest.

 

Nikandros awoke to a room washed in pale grey light, the sun already risen, though hidden behind the swollen purple imminence of rainclouds. It was an unusual occurrence, as he usually woke before dawn to begin his duties, and preferred it that way. He started to rise and then froze, realizing he was in an unfamiliar bed but not remembering how he’d gotten there. Likely it would be no issue, but once Damen had gotten the two of them a pair of highly influential Patran noblewomen and the apologies the next morning had been unpleasant.

Damen. 

Memory returned. Nikandros pushed himself into a sitting position, the blankets falling from his torso—he did not remember getting under them last night, so Jord must have done that too, which was mortifying—and checked the room for its rightful occupant. A half-unlaced arm was thrown over the back of the couch. Jord had spent the night there, Nikandros realized, because Nikandros had taken his bed. Normally, Nikandros wouldn’t have minded. He was a Kyros, and it was his due. But this was Jord, and besides, Nikandros had been finding that certain things bothered him that hadn’t before about his own expectations for other people.

Rude or not—and that was, still, the question—Nikandros would not creep from Jord’s chambers like a boy on his first illicit tryst. He coughed loudly, thumping his chest, and then stood with as much noise as he could manage. Briefly he considered splashing water in the basin to begin washing up, but Jord was already awake.

“Sleep all right?” said Jord, before the silence could get too long. At least he looked as awkward as Nikandros felt.

“Better than you,” said Nikandros, with a significant look at the couch. He tried to make it easy, a joke. He had a feeling he didn’t succeed. “Thank you. For…”

“You deserved to know, out of anyone,” said Jord. He tugged at the bottom of his rumpled jacket, making it worse, and winced as the motion strained what was obviously a stiff back. Nikandros looked back to the bed— Jord’s bed—and then again at Jord, who had crossed his arms as if daring Nikandros to make something of it.

“You like taking care of people,” Nikandros said, surprising himself. He stepped around the bed. “You try to pretend you don’t, but you do.”  
  
“I don’t try to pretend anything,” Jord said. His ears had gone red, but his tone was even.

“No,” said Nikandros, “you don’t.” And, taking two long strides forward and cupping his hands around the back of Jord’s head, kissed him.

Jord was both appreciative and enthusiastic.

It had been some time since Nikandros had indulged in this, truly indulged. The spectre of Laurent hanging over his bed was difficult to ignore. For a moment Nikandros feared that this would be the same, and then Jord fisted a hand in Nikandros’ hair, yanking Nikandros further down, and Nikandros found it was very easy to forget Laurent altogether.

Through the open window the air crackled with the promise of a storm. A gust of wind blew in as Nikandros drew Jord back towards the bed, still kissing; it was heavy with humidity, and stirred the bottom of Nikandros’ chiton, wrinkled from having been slept in, and the laces hanging down Jord’s chest. Nikandros wrapped those laces around his fingers and tugged. Jord made a choked sound that he muffled against Nikandros’ mouth.

“Have pity on an old man,” Jord said, sounding anything but old, as Nikandros tried to turn them to push Jord onto the mattress. His eyes were bright, his lips red, and he planted his feet when Nikandros pushed at him and did not move. Nikandros had fought Jord in the ring countless times, first for information and then for pleasure. He knew the thickness of muscle around Jord’s waist, and feeling it under his hands, familiar but for a new purpose, thrilled him.

This could be a fight, if they wished it. He could feel Jord offering it, solid before him, muscles bunched for action. It had been long since Nikandros had had a chance to enjoy _this_ kind of battle.

Nikandros grinned, and swung back a fist. Jord caught it.

A fight for a bedding was not the same as a fight in earnest. The point, after all, was not victory but shared pleasure. Both of them pulled their punches, feinted often, allowed openings and forwent breaking holds for sustaining them to struggle. Blows were abandoned soon enough for simple, body-on-body wrestling, tumbling to the bed and flipping each other over again and again. Pinning hands changed grip to caress. The use of teeth, a foul in the proper sport, was encouraged. At one point Nikandros tipped Jord’s shoulders off the side of the mattress to rake his nails across the line of his neck, purposefully leaving Jord’s legs free, and Jord, taking the hint, braced his knees around Nikandros' hips and got Nikandros under him. At another, Nikandros had Jord face down with a knee on his back and Jord shoved a hand under the pillow and came up with a stoppered bottle of oil, which he tossed at Nikandros before kicking himself upright and dragging Nikandros back down to the bed with his arm in a twisting grip.

Nikandros was laughing, breathless, and so was Jord, the other man’s laughs short and rough and kindling fire in Nikandros’ stomach. He could feel the heaving of Jord’s chest against his own, the tremble of muscles. When Nikandros shoved Jord’s pants down the other man was hard.

They managed to get mostly undressed before expediency made them abandon the grapple and more obviously collaborate. Jord was hairier than the Akielon fashion, which Nikandros found he liked, and his skin was lightly sweaty, flushed from the exertion. Nikandros could feel he was the same. Nikandros traced a line with his tongue from Jord’s neck to the center of his chest, and Jord groaned.

For the last several minutes Nikandros had been hampered by the necessity of keeping hold of the bottle, leaving himself without the use of one hand. He brought it to his mouth and wrenched the stopper off with his teeth before pouring the contents liberally over his own palm and reaching down. Jord grabbed his wrist, stopping him—Nikandros was confused until Jord hauled Nikandros against him, aligning them, so that when Nikandros reached again he could take both of them in hand. The first stroke was long-anticipated relief, and it made them both shudder. The second stroke coincided with Jord’s teeth against the ridge of Nikandros’ ear.

“Fuck,” said Nikandros. His ears were particularly sensitive.  
  
“Why do you Akielons only swear while fucking?” said Jord, twisting to fit his hand around Nikandros’. Nikandros panted. “I’d almost thought you didn’t know how, until now.”

“It’s politeness. Something you Veretians wouldn’t understand,” said Nikandros. Jord was working his way down to Nikandros’ earlobe—the man was an astute tactician—and it was making the slow slide of their joined hands unbearable in its inadequacy. Nikandros yanked Jord’s head up and bit into his mouth. For a moment Jord’s hand faltered.

“Damn fucking shit,” said Jord, rumbling against Nikandros' mouth, his body. “I can’t get a good grip like this.” He rolled Nikandros over onto his back, his eyes flicking up at Nikandros’ to check if it was okay, and fit their bodies together in a way that made Nikandros hiss. He could feel himself beginning to leak across his own belly and rolled his hips up into the sensation. If he added a bit more force than was necessary, just to see if he could unbalance Jord, then it was nothing Jord wasn’t expecting.

“Do you know how long I’ve wanted you under me,” said Jord, dragging at Nikandros’ hair to fit their mouths together again. Then Jord froze. “If that’s…fuck, you’re a Kyros, Aktis said that’s…should I…”  
  
Nikandros could have punched him for ceasing the roll of their bodies together, and did, but lightly. “I very clearly don’t mind,” he said, pitching his voice low to make Jord shiver. With both hands he caught Jord around the hips and flexed upwards against him. Jord swore again, unsurprisingly, and fumbled to coat his hand with more of the oil (useful—Nikandros had lost track of the bottle) and resume his grip around them both. Nikandros could have fought the reactionary arch of his spine, but he’d never been one to hold back in bedsport. From Jord’s pleased growl, neither was he.

It was honest fucking, plain and simple. By the time Jord had three fingers in Nikandros’ ass , Jord’s shoulders were all handprints; by the the time Jord replaced the fingers with his cock, Nikandros had finished the line of bruises across Jord’s throat and down to the center of his chest, and Jord had given Nikandros some of the same. The comfortable width of Jord inside him made Nikandros sigh and throw his head back onto the pillows.

“You’re like a giant cat,” murmured Jord. He sounded as if he were half-gone already, not knowing what he was saying.

Nikandros bit lazily at Jord’s shoulder. Jord had, maddeningly, and insultingly if Nikandros had not spent the past several weeks more celibate than his usual custom, spent a long time on the preparation, and Nikandros had settled somewhat. His impatience, however, was returning, and he wanted to lean into it. 

At some point, without either one of them noticing, the clouds outside had opened for sheeting rain. Nikandros felt cool droplets condensing on his skin from the spray outside the window, saw them on Jord’s as well. Distantly, a woman was shouting about weapons and rust. Nikandros' hair was heavy and damp, and he guided Jord’s hands back into it. He had noticed that Jord liked that.

“Are you—” started Jord, and was cut off as Nikandros bucked up. Jord grunted and, thankfully, shut up and got to work. Another time, perhaps, they could take it slow, but Nikandros had been building up for too long already. He worked his right hand out from underneath himself, where it had been holding up his hips, and fisted it around his own cock. Jord’s eyes tracked the motion. He sucked his lip into his mouth.

It was fast, after that, gasping and moaning and rutting wildly against each other.The sheets were damp with their sweat and the ambient moisture, and they clung to Nikandros’ shoulders as he tossed his head. Jord’s eyes were dark with concentration, intent upon Nikandros’ face. He had removed his hands from Nikandros’ hair with obvious reluctance in order to brace them on either side of Nikandros and give better leverage to his thrusts. He came a moment before Nikandros himself did, his fingers seizing in the sheets and Nikandros’ leg around his waist locking Jord deep and hot inside him, where Nikandros liked it. Through the post-climax haze Jord spread his fingers through the remains of the oil on Nikandros’ belly and stroked him once, twice, tangling their fingers together again, and then Nikandros was coming.

They took a minute to catch their breath.

Jord rolled off of Nikandros with a groan, different from the ones he’d been giving earlier, tired instead of frantic. Nikandros, who was, happily, feeling the same, flopped over onto his stomach and cast an arm around Jord’s waist.

“We can’t stay here. We’ve got too many things to do,” Jord said. He sounded like he’d rather drive nails into his eyes. Instead of getting up, he shifted to pry his arm out from between them and mirrored Nikandros' hold on him. The slap of his skin on Nikandros’ bare back, sticky from the humidity, was a fair representation of how little Nikandros wanted to move.

“They can manage without us for five minutes,” Nikandros mumbled into Jord’s shoulder. Wishful thinking.  
  
Jord started laughing, the low laugh that Nikandros liked so much. “No they can’t,” he said. “You know what? No they fucking can’t.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Jord’s not old, I imagine him like 35-40? So not quite middle aged, but still he’s got some maturity that our Kings and Nikandros don’t, yet. And yes, I always picture him going prematurely grey. ~~Bury me in salt-and-pepper Jord~~
> 
> Honestly tho I feel like after the catharsis of getting the proper information on what happened to Damen and getting angry then crying it out, Nikandros can start noticing what Laurent’s been doing to atone and to forgive him? Like he’ll have to learn more about him, but if we all loved Laurent when we just had scraps given us then Nikandros, with the second biggest heart and honor in Akielos, surely can. (Unless that’s just me?)
> 
> (I am trans and bi/pan, btw, it just doesn’t seem likely based on canon that folks in Vere especially are great about those, and Laurent 1) probably hasn’t had much chance for education in that and 2) is pretending to be worse than he is, as is his wont. The fair amount of other not-so-great stuff is obviously also all the characters’ and not mine. What am I saying, you’re all here, we all understand that characters’ views =/= author’s views)
> 
> I’m not on tumblr much, but I did make a sideblog to post these fics, so if you want to shoot me an ask to chat I’m at [duckfresco](http://duckfresco.tumblr.com).


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